Why is everyone so pretentious

>Reading for entertainment.
>Genre fiction.

He hasn't experienced the comfy Napoleonic era prose of Patrick O'Brian.

>tfw Big Shakem wrote his plays to entertain the masses
>they also carry substance that allowed them to survive for hundreds of years
>mfw plebs think these things are mutually exclusive

The fact that they have to do out of their way to avoid them speaks for itself however.

Yea, how dare someone want to be an original voice.

>image.jpg
>t-there is nothing wrong with being a pleb! i like being a simpleton!

bwahahahahahhaaha

>Missing my point

You are going to have to tone down in the pretentious alert if you are going to start wanting to enjoy books.

>(Gasp!)

what is the prize for being a complexton?

Yes, fantasy has been saturated with knockoff Tolkiens. But if you look at current trends its easy enough to see a many authors circumventing anything close to what he was doing. To the point its not even an issue anymore. So the point becomes moot and at worse disengenuous.

I enjoy pretentiousness and actually having standards as opposed to shit. Call me crazy.

I think the hostility against garbage is keeping this board somewhat good but it is being eroded and replaced by, well, shit. Stay hostile and keep standards up. Eventually the plebs will go away.

The problem arrives when the people hailing themselves as paladins of good taste are pretty basic themselves.

>Lord Of The Rings
>I see these books shittalked constantly for being badly written, overly detailed,
Really? I haven't anyone say anything bad about it, at worst they just say they didn't like it and it wasn't for them.

You sound like a poof

>muh pretentious
>they don't like the books because they are popular
>uses gay bullet points
>Gasp!
kys pleb

I duno fa:m im no patrician but
Theyre not that bad(except song of ice and fire, it's shit) theyre just looked down because of their meme status. Its not like some faggot judge you anyway carry on my man

People on Veeky Forums like Tolkien though

Try to compare Tolkien and Grrm and literally everyone will get mad because Tolkien is a different class.

Veeky Forums is filled with hipsters, deal with it or get out

Harry Potter is pleb YA. Harry Potter for adults is Stephen King ("quite right" - Harold Bloom)

For the OP, populist shit is easy to find somewhere to talk about it. There is a preference for more esoteric shit here because that's the kind of space the users here have typically wanted, rather than being homogenised with good reads or the majority of reddit (or real life)

On top of that there's not that many discussions to have about them. What would you really say about HHG beyond that you liked it? LotR less so but it's not really a treasure trove of hidden meaning, mostly people marvel at the reimagined Beowulf or the linguistic depth or something like that if it gets mentioned here. There's probs more mileage in CS Lewis. There were discussions from people reading for plot and looking for tweests in GoT but the TV show has killed that and GRRM hasn't lived (although literally somehow he has continued to live) up to expectations.

You don't know what pretentious means.

youllsees is pretentious

This is a board for discussion about literature. There are plenty of other places for you to discuss your genre fiction.

>caring about other people opinion
You're as autistic as them.

Wouldn't someone who has read far more than you have more say in it than you? Say, if a plummer had to go to your house and told you whoever installed your pipes didn't know what they were doing, would you dismiss their opinion with "well it seems fine to me"?

I swear to god no one even knows what pretentious means.

Have you never heard of the ol cowboy technique of making everything seem much worse and much more expensive? Like if a plumber came round and started tutting saying everything would need replacing most people would get another plumber in most cases

yes yes yes yes yes it is yes pretentious yes

Veeky Forums is full of pretentious pseuds who will call you a pleb and your favorite book shit no matter what it is. That being said, the reason people here shit talk the books you listed is because they're fairly simple books with little literary merit and there's really not that much to even talk about with them. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're badly written but really only Tolkien is worth reading of those, and that has more to do with his impact on fantasy than much else. The other two are genuinely not particularly well written (especially ASoIaF) compared with most literary fiction and the great majority of books discussed on this board. It also doesn't help that all these books are really popular and overly praised in communities like reddit/goodreads, which brings out the inner contrarian in Veeky Forums posters. is a pretty good post too

How pretentious of you to say that :^]

Either you imitate him or spend half your time obsessively making sure you're not imitating him.

Funny thing is, people here used to praise ASoIaF before it got its HBO adaptation.

Really, "fantasy" as a genre is cancer because the word itself is a lot more broad than what's considered a "fantasy" story. If you want to do anything other than medievalesque swords and sorcery type shit you have to call it "speculative fiction" because "fantasy" has come to mean one very specific type of story with various levels of "fantastical" elements.

Most of those people either left or are now in the jetpackshit containment thread. It's not the same crowd.

So you are new then? Because a sizeable majority of Veeky Forums has disliked the LotR for years.

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some worthless comments:
- lord of the rings is alright, we dont bash that too harshly. its a bit shit if this is all you read though. it certainly is badly-written, though some A* world building. simplistic themes ect.

- ASOIAF: pure plot-driven drivel. someone post that Sunset passage. why waste so much time on such worthless garbage. literally 50 shades of gray for man-children

- hitchhikers guide
its funny but too reddit/fedora at times. a lot of the hate is due to its popularity, but mostly because its overrated and smug

In summary: we dont hate books because they are popular, but we hate books for the same reason that a lot of people enjoy these books (and similar), i.e. theyre smug, simplistic, circle-jerky garbage. correlation does not imply causation. its the same reason why people who are REALLY into music wouldnt say that the Top 40 are the greatest musicians.
in short: if it appeals to the masses, its probably shit. but appealing to the masses isnt the REASON why its shit.
idk man

lets be honest, almost all of us have sat down and read a plebby book (im using the word pleb not because i believe in the pleb/patrician distinction but because its a useful shorthand for simplistic unoriginal pandering) because we were too lazy for anything thought-provoking. but we dont pretend its anything more than that.

also this is Veeky Forumserature. genre fiction isnt literature (though they often intersect).

if you havent read any great literature then give it a go. you might like it.

p.s. we are more pretensious than we ought to be though. but thats mainly shitposting and memes

its just hipsterism, Veeky Forums hates mainstream then creates its own mainstream that's equally memey

you fucking waste of space

Not at all. Most of the shitposts that make everyone here seem like they read the same 3-5 books are by newfag memers who haven't read any of them.

It's just that if you're seriously interested in literature and don't only see books as something to pass the time with, you're going to look into things other than what everyone just praises for its entertainment value.

It doesn't take a "hipster" to think "maybe there's more to books than stories about swords and magic or wacky space adventures?" and follow through on that thought.

Don't pretend I'm wrong. You goofballs spam the same five names all week then pretend you're actually doing something. Big fucking laugh.

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>It doesn't take a "hipster" to think "maybe there's more to books than stories about swords and magic or wacky space adventures?" and follow through on that thought.

Its very easy to do without the chip on your shoulder. If you really think you're big shit for reading something other than an average fantasy novel then you really have some growing up to do.

>If you really think you're big shit
This wasn't said or implied any way. The only one with a chip on their shoulder is you.

but most people don't think they're "big shit" for reading literature.
some do, sure, but most don't.

Its the daily order on this board, don't pretend otherwise.

>mostly because it seems like nothing but (supposedly good) plot
>pure plot-driven drivel.

Newfag here, isn't literature all about the plot?

This is what happens when you get brainwashed by hyperconsumerist marketing rhetoric and develop enough loyalty for a class of products to feel personally slighted when they're criticized in any way.

>he insulted my safe-space
>better call him a lemming!

I don't think I'm better than anyone for reading what I read and I don't think anyone is worse for reading genre fiction, but what bothers me personally is when someone only reads fantasy or genre fiction then feels inferior and needs to call anyone who reads something beyond fantasy "pretentious".

That is a 'problem' I agree, but I personally make a point to not even bother with those types. The way I see it everyone has their time when they want to branch out. It's not my business to force anyone.

This is a stock opinion that sounds good but I've seen much evidence for it. The influences on something like Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight books go way beyond just reacting to Tolkien. In general I think there's as much Edgar Rice Burroughs, Marvel comics, and pop science fiction in a lot of post 2000s fantasy.

It doesn't make them good of course, but "it's all just miming/subverting Tolkien" isn't smart criticism.

You will most likely get a bunch of meme replies or angry reaction images to this but in what has always been considered good literature, plot very often takes a backseat to other elements. It's a part of a good book, but certainly not the only one or the most important one. Purists on this board will tell you all that matters is the aesthetic quality of the prose, which is what some authors (Joyce, Nabokov) strived for.

yes, I agree that belittling someone or trying to force someone to read something they don't want/aren't prepared for/aren't interested in is pretentious, and that is a problem too.
it just goes both ways.

Hitchhiker's Guide is one of my favorite books imho

>"this book is more intellectual than this book"
>doesn't even try to give an intellectually tenable reason why that is

If anything, the entire publishing industry is a dedicated safe-space for plebs and you're lashing out because a few people aren't eagerly guzzling the same runny diarrhea you've been told is just as good as anything else you could be reading by the people who are selling it to you.

try again

>Laments that others aren't backing up their opinions while failing to read the thread where several posts do exactly that

>its funny but too reddit/fedora at times.
It is really fucking embarrassing how you rail against "popular/mass culture" but still RELY on fucking internet memes to communicate.

This guy's got it

Do you fucking think arguments like "it's fedora core" or "it's like 50 shades of gray for man-children" or "lmao i enjoyed it when i was 14" or "tha prose is shit-tier" constitute some kind of 'intellectual' and tenable argument? A fucking elementary school paper wouldn't accept the way in which you people express yourselves.

That's because you're on a somalian woodcut engraving forum, my friend. Nobody here is going to tear apart a book and provide cited contextual evidence of its shittiness.
If you would like to find "intellectual" reasons that those books are amazing because you've been triggered by this phenomenon , go ahead.

So it is perfectly acceptable to communicate in the most low-brow way possible but to actually consume media, that conform to this low-brow taste(that you undoubtedly possess) is something you avoid?

not that user, but they aren't saying it's acceptable, they're just asking what do you expect from Veeky Forums.

Yes, it is acceptable to post stupid memes on an imageboard made for that purpose and to read literature at different times throughout the day. I don't know why you're accusing me of having shit taste, do you want to talk about it family?

...because we're on the internet.
everyone knows what i mean when i say reddit/fedora, its more efficent than saying: smug, pseudo-intellectual, self-congratulatory, atheistic, progressive, celebrates ""nerd culture"", panders to losers, simplistic view of the world, over-confident, ""nu-male"" ect.
you might not like the fact that a hat or a single website has become a by-word for an entire ideology/personality but it has (at least on here).

similarly, if i said "redneck" you can identify a full range of political, religious, ethical,... beliefs, identified just from their sunburnt neck.

also if you think im railing against "popular/mass culture" you didnt even slightly read my post. im saying that we dont hate popular books because theyre popular, we hate (sometimes) popular books because they are shit, and they're popular because they are shit

But that's like using Ebonics to rail on the way Mexicans speak.

I'm glad it happens to be honest. I don't even care if people are actually being serious when they trash popular books, but I suspect a lot of them (including me) just do so ironically because it's fun. I wouldn't take it seriously at all, and I encourage it because it in turn encourages the discussion of lesser known works and authors, which I always like to know to further my list of books to read. Without such pretentiousness, I feel like Veeky Forums would become more of a circlejerk than it already is (you can't eliminate it completely on any site about books, lets be honest) and it would start to look more like,,,, dare i say it.......r/books. *shudders*

Why do you care what some anonymous faggots on the internet think?

it's not pretension, it's just a desire for a different class of depth, and a bit of disdain for those who don't seek the same thing. I loved Hitchhiker's, it got me back into literature after far too long a hiatus, it led me to read other things like Catch-22, and on and on, I won't ever shit on them, but I will be a little perturbed with someone who doesn't ever push themselves to find something that might appeal to them in a more profound way. that's all. I'm sure there are plenty of people who just hate it to hate it.

I can easily discuss (in depth) all of those books without ever having read them. They're marketable entertainment. Could you have an in depth discussion about, say, Sein und Zeit/Soumission/The Brothers Karamazov?

Goddamn you are indeed a newfag. Literature is about prose and themes.

Spotted the redditor. Only a real dumbass would talk about a website as if he's not on it. Just because you don't have any sort of valid counterargument doesn't mean you can throw out the generic "it's just hipsters!"

goddamn you win the Fag of the Week Award

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My new friend user here must think "pretentious" means "good"

Oh FUCK OFF, mobileposter. I wish supreme faggotry was a bannable offense. I have learned and developed more as a person in my 7 years of Veeky Forums than I have from any other online community. What in the hell are you even doing here if you hate it so much? Veeky Forums seeks objective truths and maintains a cynical attitude to keep away from the bullshit of the rest of the internet. People like you are so uncomfortable with our ideas that you feel the need to save this to your phone and post it when there's a hint of an argument about the quality of the site. We don't want you here, I don't want you here. When I come to Veeky Forums I want to discuss fucking literature with people who may or may not be likeminded to me. I don't want to see your candyass crying about "misogyny" and about how we're just awful. People like you have greatly compromised the quality of discussion on Veeky Forums because everything has to be about how we're too problematic or some other nonsensical token argument of the internet obsessed liberal. So take your own advice and block Veeky Forums; return to whatever safe space you came from. It will never be this website. Get the fuck out of here.

Take a chill pill bro. Maybe some 5HTP

>I dont have any sort of valid response so I'll tell him to chill out xD

I'd probably think the same thing about the site if I only went on /b/ or one of the equally shitty boards. For all its flaws, Veeky Forums is a cut above maybe 85% of the site.

this is what I fucking hate about when you jackasses post a Veeky Forums chart on Reddit then we get a goddamn mass exodus of newfags and have to unpack every goddamn meme and spoonfeed them to get them up to speed.

We use memes as shorthand. We don't hold discussions if they can be encapsulated in a few terms that we've invented.
Calling something "pleb, shit-tier, god-tier, patrician, cozy, GOAT, fedora, buzzword-salad, etc" isn't dismissive. We know what that implies because we've been here for longer than 15 fucking minutes.
We don't post for fucking upvotes, we toss around memes because they pretty much cover the gist of what we have to say.

We, for the most part, read for prose, characterization, themes, and philosophy.
plot and genre pandering are generally dismissed as pleb shit.

Also, enjoying a book doesn't magically imbue it with literary merit, Hitchhikers Guide is literally Dr. Who: the book. It's just cheap smug British jibber jabber.

Here's all you need to know :

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witness

Leave now, before cynicism ruins any perceptions you've had of books. I can't enjoy any of my childhood favorites anymore

yes

There just not very good mate, you know how Captain America Winter Soldier is pretty good but actually when you compare it to say...The Shining or Adaptation it starts to look a bit rubbish and really you don't want to invest too much of your psychic energy into CAWS because it's basically a waste of your time. It's like that but 4 books

>yet IMO they are all excellent books and great reads.

The fantasies you like are heavily influenced by history, you should try reading the texts that inspired them. History is just extremely low fantasy.